Monster Crusader

ANN VICKERS--Sinclair Lewis--Double-day, Dor an ($1.50).

SINCLAIR LEWIS--Carl Van Doren and Harvey Taylor--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Before Sinclair ("Red") Lewis made a name for himself as a satirist of U. S. civilization he was a romancer and writer of romantic verse of the also-ran variety. The unromantic world, which dampens many high enthusiasms, turned his to hate. Because he was a good hater and because he gave a name to two U. S. phenomena-- Main Street and Babbitt--that were crying for a name, the public finally applauded him and prizes came his way. But Sinclair Lewis is still, as he has always been, a romantic, an enthusiast. Though cynics say that if you want sympathy you had better look for it in the dictionary, Author Lewis is a passionate believer in the reality of dictionary words. Ann Vickers, his first book since he won the Nobel Prize, is only incidentally an attack on U. S. politics, society, penology. Fundamentally it is a defiant, 362-page paean in praise of Womanhood and Crusades.

Ann Vickers was a tomboy, a bossy little girl who, like many another, never quite got over her youth. In spite of temptations she refused to fritter away her seriousness in the usual boy-&-girl business in her small-town set. She went to a small Eastern college, splashed seriously, busily, happily as its Biggest Frog. There she was tempted from her narrow way by a liberal-minded professor, who tried to seduce her but succeeded only in destroying her orthodox faith. After graduation Ann rolled up her sleeves, got into the woman-suffrage fight. From that point on she had few breathing spells. While she was laboring mightily at social settlement work in Manhattan she let herself fall in love with a worthless neurotic. Of him she was soon rid, suffering an abortion rather than bear his child. After a brief interlude as charitarian to a publicity-loving millionairess, Ann attacked penology, spent 14 hellish months as a matron in a Southern penitentiary. Conditions there and her helplessness to do anything lasting about them filled her with a horror of prisons, a grim determination to do what she could. The first shadow of middle age found her in charge of a model woman's prison in Manhattan, an Authority, a Famous Woman.

No willing spinster, Ann always wanted to get married but could not find the right man, began to think she never would. In a weak moment she married a likable fellow-charitarian, quickly discovered that he was a windy fake. But she tried to keep things patched up till one evening she met the Right Man: Judge Barney Dolphin, able but not too scrupulous Manhattan jurist, with a Broadway reputation and a wife of his own. They fell in love immediately, and Ann let nothing make any difference. She bore Barney's child, divorced her husband, stood by her man when scandal broke him and sent him to jail, waited for his release, got ready to start all over again with him.

The Author. Friendly Critic Carl Van Doren says: "Sinclair Lewis will outlast John Galsworthy." Van Doren regards Lewis as "the quintessence of the U. S. . . . Much as he has traveled, he remains something of the Middle Westerner, a little confused by New York, a little awed by Europe, a little suspicious before complexity and elegance though at the same time delighted with them. A satirist at home or with other Americans, he is a patriot abroad or with foreigners."

Tall, angular, awkward, with thinning reddish hair, bulging eyes in a blotchy red face, Sinclair Lewis would look not unlike a mummy if he were ever in repose. He talks in a high, quick voice, laughs neighingly, loves to keep changing the subject, to mimic, which he does ably. He hates crowds but cannot stand being alone, is shy but bumptious, eager but bitter.

Born in Sauk Center, Minn. 48 years ago, Harry Sinclair Lewis has been a Yaleman (A. B. 1907), a janitor (at Upton Sinclair's Utopian Helicon Hall), smalltown newshawk, charity worker, publisher's hack. Associated Pressman (discharged for incompetence), Satevepostman. When Main Street surprised him by becoming a best-seller he was able to take himself seriously as a writer. Whether or not he enjoys publicity he has had his full share. Headlines blared when he: turned down the Pulitzer Prize (1926), gave God ten minutes to strike him dead (in Kansas City, 1927), won the Nobel Prize, attacked the American Academy, was smacked by Theodore Dreiser (1931) when he accused Dreiser of plagiarism.

Restless, Sinclair Lewis has wandered far from Sauk Center, writes his books wherever he happens to be. After finishing Ann Vickers last August, he went to Austria for "an indefinite stay."

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